This past Tuesday, the BFA Fine Arts Department hosted an opening reception for three exhibitions of student work at the Visual Arts Gallery. Over 300 students, faculty and friends gathered to see the new work, beginning with paintings and collages in “New Art/New York,”the exhibitionin the main gallery curated by Department Chair Emeritus Jeanne Siegel. Moving into the next two project rooms,“Melting Into Air” presents work by four artists who explore tensions between nature and society. Curator Gary Sherman says that the phrase “all that is solid melts into air”–coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848–can be used as a lens through which to look at these works in light of recent global events.

In the last project room is “Mixtape,”an exhibition of prints, painting and collage, curated by Gunars Prande, printmaking coordinator at SVA. Inspired by the idea of a musical mixtape, which maintains a thread of continuity among disparate selections, the exhibition features artists whose work experiments with printmaking by mixing media.

All three exhibitions run through Saturday, February 21, at the Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26th Street, 15th floor.